Who am I?

Rick JohnsonCo-founder

&Vice President of Product Strategy

VitalSource Technology

Board member of IMS GlobalBoard member of IMS Global Europe

Board member of IDPF (EPUB)Co-Chair of W3C Publishing Business Group

Co-Chair of W3C Publishing Steering Committee3 International Patents on ebook distribution technologies

Not another one of those talks…

The Act

of Reading

The Act

of Learning

…new requirements need new approaches

Learning content is changing…

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2019 (F)

2018 (F)

2017 (F)

2016 (E)

2015 (E)

2014 (E)

2013 (E) 4.1

4.3

4.6

4.8

5.1

5.5

5.8

6.2

6.4

6.6

6.7

6.8

6.9

7.0

1.2

1.3

1.4

1.4

1.4

1.4

1.5

14.7

15.2

15.7

15.8

16.0

16.3

16.6

North America Central/South America EMEA Asia Pacific

Global Education Market Revenue by Geography, 2013-19

($Billions)  

26.2

30.9

Learning content is changing…In Education

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Learning content is changing…In Education

Digital learning platforms that drive outcomes.

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We Provide Solutions For:

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Institutions CorporateLearning

Associations&CertifyingBodies

ExecutiveEducation

CampusStores

Publishers

Our Learning Platforms

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#1eTextcreation&deliveryplatform.

Author,analyze,&powersubscriptionsandcollections.

Personalizeddigitalcourseexperiences.

Designedtoimprovestudentoutcomes

Engagingonlinebusinesslearningexperiences.

Drivebusinessperformance,withlearningatscale.

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VitalSourcelocations

Partnerlocations

Ingramlocations

Localized in 37 Languages Arabic Bulgarian Catalan Chinese-Simplified Chinese-Traditional Czech Danish Dutch English-UK English-US Finnish French French-Canada German Greek Hebrew Hindi Icelandic Irish Gaelic Italian Japanese Korean Magyar (Hungarian) Norwegian Polish Portuguese Portuguese-Brazilian Romanian Russian Spanish-Mexico Spanish-Spain Swedish Tagalog (Filipino) Thai Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) Turkish Welsh

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VitalSourceGlobalScale

What do we do?

241 Countries37 languages

16 million Users this year

3.5 billionPage views

Books opened per day

1.5 millionLTI Launches

per week

2.5 millionCaliper events

per week

75 million

The Simple Formula for Student Success

Great Instruction + Great Content +Quality Student Engagement

“We are in the midst of the greatest learning revolution in history. Technology will continue to enable a future where learning is inclusive and accessible to all, but teachers -- not tools -- will fuel this shift.”

Michelle Pacansky-Brock author of Best Practices for Teaching With Emerging Technologies 

Content Analytics: Realtime Events

Didyounoticeallthedata?

LoginPage View Note

HighlightLogout

LearnerBook Chapter

annotationEvent:highlightedHighlights

{"@context":"http://purl.imsglobal.org/ctx/caliper/v1/Context","@type":"http://purl.imsglobal.org/caliper/v1/AnnotationEvent","actor":{"@id":"https://api.vitalsource.com/users/demo"},"action":"http://purl.imsglobal.org/vocab/caliper/v1/action#Highlighted","object":{"@id":"https://api.vitalsource.com/products/9781119231417/25","@type":"http://www.idpf.org/epub/vocab/structure/#bodymatter"},"generated":{"@id":"https://api.vitalsource.com/users/demo/annotations/1","@type":"http://purl.imsglobal.org/caliper/v1/HighlightAnnotation","dateCreated":"2016-01-31T15:01:01.001Z","annotated":"https://api.vitalsource.com/products/9781119231417/25"},"eventTime":"2016-01-31T15:01:50.001Z","edApp":{"@id":"https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com","name":"VitalSourceBookshelf","@type":"http://purl.imsglobal.org/caliper/v1/SoftwareApplication"}}

Whatcanyoudowithallofthisdata?

Webuiltdashboards(ofcourse!)

Support Collaborative Discussions▪ Encouragestudentstoaccessmaterialsearly

▪ Identifyatriskstudents

▪ Gaininsightsintowhichcontentstudentsfindmost

challengingormostuseful

▪ Providebetterstudentcoachingbyunderstanding

individualstudent

engagement

Monitor Engagement

▪University-wide engagement ▪What books are

used most? ▪Platform

preferences

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VitalSource Data Feeds

Insight into Engagement How student users are engaging with publisher content in Bookshelf—how often and at what points

Leverage your Internal DataJoin with your internal data for deeper insights

Standards-based IntegrationCaliper-formatted data feeds for easy integration

Power your own analytical platforms.

VitalSource Analyze data feeds help universities and publishers power their own tools and platforms, unlocking new insights around student success.

Data Feed Delivery Options

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Near RealtimeDelivery

More Relevant InteractionsCustomize user interactions with the most up to date data, ensuring feedback relevancy.✔

More Integrated User ExperiencesIncorporate student learning interactions within your tool or platform for a more integrated user experience.

✔

Caliper FormattedCreated by IMS, Caliper is the industry standard for transmitting learning interactions.

✔Data is pushed to your endpoint as soon as possible.

More PossibilitiesWith the most frequent, most granular learning data, what will you build? The possibilities are endless.

✔

Data Feed Delivery Options

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PeriodicDelivery

Simplified ProcessingGather and ingest large sets of data at your convenience.✔Easy IntegrationSimply download data from a shared location.✔Portable FilesData extracts can be used by a variety of systems from Excel to your data warehouse.✔

Data is pushed to a shared location on a set schedule.

Simple FormatExtracts are simple, delimited flat files that can be easily used by a variety of systems.

✔

IMS Caliper Delivery

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The standard for delivering learning interactions.Industry StandardCreated by IMS, Caliper is the industry standard for transmitting learning interactions.

✔Powerful FormattingBased on JSON-LD, Caliper is both human readable and easily understood by machines.

✔Semantic InteroperabilityCaliper prescribes a dialect for communicating learning interactions, ensuring consistent interpretation across systems.

✔System InteroperabilityCaliper defines the structure of each data point, ensuring consistent integration and consumption across systems.

✔

VitalSource has been certified to deliver Caliper since October 2015.

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Engagement Data Overview

Event Types Base Metadata

• User• Book• Time

• Page• Device• Platform

• Login• LTI Launch• View• Print• Note• Highlight

• Bookmark• Search• Download• Outcome• Media• Assignments

Learning events and metadata:

Manually combine Caliper event streams from VitalSource and Blackboard.

Associate activities with student and outcome data from UMBC SIS.

Let’s do a study!!

Let’s do a study!!

Engagement Predicts Outcomes

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Stud

ySessions

3.2

3.9

4.6

5.3

6.0

Week1 Week2 Week3 Week4 Week5

ABCDF

Impact on Student Achievement and Retention

33

21%*

WhenstudentshaveaccesstomaterialsonDay1,theyscoreonaverage11pointshigherthan

studentswaiting14+days.

21pointincreaseinretentionbringing

overallretentionandcompletionrateupto

94%

84%*

84%ofstudentsachievedagradeof

80%orhigherdemonstrating

improvedsuccessrates

11%1.9%*

RiseinGPAforaMathcourse

*Examples from recent campus experiences

Improving Pass and Persistence Rates

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• Withdrawal rate decreased 2.39%

• Students who persist are passing!

• About 500 students per year, just in these two courses.

0.00%

22.50%

45.00%

67.50%

90.00%

Pre-VitalSource Post-VitalSource

10.90%13.29%

5.67%5.69%

83.43%81.02%

PassFailWithdraw

Key Findings

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KEYRESEARCHFINDINGSANDUSES

Theearlierstudentsstartreading,thebetter

Identifywhohasn'topenedthebook

Studentsneedtoreadconsistentlythroughoutthe

semester

Understandthespectrumofengagementinacourse

Personalizeofficehoursconsultswithindividual

engagement

Knowandsharethelevelofengagementrequiredforsuccess

Personalizesuggestionsbasedonindividualengagement

Monitorengagementthroughoutthecourse

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THE WORLD OF LEARNING HAS CHANGED

THE REQUIREMENTS OF CONTENT MUST CHANGE

OLD WORLD NEW WORLD

PDF EPUB Media Assessment Personalization Adaptive Engines

OLD WORLD NEW WORLD

Richness of integration

Innovation in business models

Richness of engagement

PDF EPUB Media Assessment Personalization Adaptive Engines

Richness of data

Accessibility is required!

Well-designed and inclusive e-books can address the barriers that students

with print disabilities have.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case and many students find that e-books are either inaccessible to them, or when they

are accessible, difficult to find.

Dobson, V. & McNaught, A., (2017). Crowdsourcing e-book accessibility information and the impact on staff development. Insights. 30(2), pp.61–70. DOI:

http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.358

The problem

This is not a checklist!

End-to-end AccessibilityEnd-to-end accessibility can only happen

when each participant does their part

Publisher Institution eBook Vendors

Everyone must do their part

eBook Vendor Institution

Content (Publisher)

eBook Vendor

InstitutionContent

(Publisher)

Everyone must do their part

Vision of the Future▪Publisher creating “Born Accessible”▪Solving 80% of the use cases▪Direct support of the remaining 20%

Selecting the right format is essential

Text & Reading Order✔ Not Specified🚫Reflowable (mobile ready!)✔ Not Reflowable🚫Navigation✔ Bookmarks can be added🚫Font resizing✔ Zoom and Pan🚫Interactivity✔ No Interactivity🚫

Image descriptions can be added to either format

While Authoring✔ Post Authoring🚫

We support both, but there are trade offs when it comes to usability and accessibility!

VitalSource Catalog is Ready!

Titles in active distribution ▪745,384 EPUB ▪672,709 PDF

Top Viewed Titles in 2017EPUB PDF

Top 25 25 0Top 50 46 4

Top 100 89 11

Top Viewed Titles in 2018 (thru Sept)EPUB PDF

Top 25 25 0Top 50 49 1

Top 100 94 6

Existing Guidelines▪ ‘The clean, flexible, consistent interfaces that support high levels of disabled

access are very similar to those required for use on a mobile browser.’▪ Existing guidelines mean little to those who matter - Accessibility guidelines for

web content are already in existence, however, these are beyond the technical understanding of most stakeholders

▪ ‘We are W3C compliant’ is easy for a supplier to claim and hard for a purchaser to argue. By developing easily demonstrated criteria, purchasers are empowered.

▪ 96.9% agreed or slightly agreed that e-book suppliers should provide better accessibility information.

Dobson, V. & McNaught, A., (2017). Crowdsourcing e-book accessibility information and the impact on staff development. Insights. 30(2), pp.61–70. DOI:

http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.358

TTS ≠ AT[Text-to-speech software] is important in the learning experience of many disabled students. Screen reading software [assistive technology] is essential for blind students to access digital information, text-to-speech similarly so for many dyslexic students.

Dobson, V. & McNaught, A., (2017). Crowdsourcing e-book accessibility information and the impact on staff development. Insights. 30(2), pp.61–70. DOI:

http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.358

Text-to-speech is not equal to assistive technology

Text-to-speech is an alternate modality

to reading

Accessibility is Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (WCAG 2.0),

which includes screen reader functionality.

A Look at the Problem…

Publisher 1 Publisher 2 Publisher 3

Instructor Selection

eBook Vendor Afile format?platform?

accessibility markup?

? ? ?

File Markup

Course Adoption

Student Purchase/Access

? ?

eBook Vendor Bfile format?platform?

accessibility markup?

Building on the

foundation of EPUB

The Accessibility Specification Means…

1. Discoverable 2. Accessible 3. Optimized

Regardless of the type or level of accessibility an EPUB Publication achieves, it must be distributed accessibly

OptimizedAn Optimized EPUB Publication is discoverable to its intended audience through the inclusion of rich metadata, even if it is not identified as broadly accessible per this specification.

In addition to the metadata requirements defined in Discovery, an optimized EPUB Publication must identify the standard or guidelines the content adheres to in a [DCTERMS] conformsTo property. The value of this property must be an IRI [RFC3987] that references the standard or guidelines it follows.

The following example shows a conformance statement for an EPUB 3 Publication that conforms to

the [DAISY Audio] guidelines.<package …>    <metadata>     …     <link rel="dcterms:conformsTo" href="http://www.daisy.org/guidelines/epub/navigable-audio-only-epub3-guidelines"/>   …    </metadata>   … </package>

Discoverablemust include the following [schema.org] accessibility metadata:• accessMode — (e.g., textual, visual, auditory, tactile).• accessibilityFeature — (e.g., alternative text, extended descriptions, captions).• accessibilityHazard — (e.g., flashing, motion simulation, sound).• accessibilitySummary — summary of the accessibility, including a description of any known deficiencies

Inclusion of the following [schema.org] accessibility metadata is recommended:• accessModeSufficient — one or more access modes sufficient to consume the content without significant loss of

information, such as the inclusion of transcripts for audio content

Inclusion of the following [schema.org] accessibility metadata is optional:• accessibilityAPI — indicates the use of scripting that follows [WAI-ARIA 1.1] authoring practices• accessibilityControl — identifies input methods that can be used to access the content (keyboard, mouse, …)

AccessibleEPUB Publications must meet [WCAG 2.0] Level A , but it is recommended that they meet Level AA.

Authors should include page navigation in an EPUB Publication whenever any of the following cases is true:

• the EPUB Publication is identified as the equivalent of a statically-paginated publication

• the EPUB Publication is offered as an alternative where the use of both versions can be reasonably predicted

• the EPUB Publication is generated from a workflow that allows the retention of page break locations across formats.Authors may include page navigation in reflowable EPUB Publications without statically paginated equivalents.

A conformant EPUB Publication must meet the following criteria when it includes page navigation:

• It must provide a means of locating the page break locations; It may include page break markers; It must identify the source of the page breaks.

In addition, if page numbers are read aloud in a synchronized text-audio playback of the content (e.g., EPUB 3 Media Overlays), Authors must identify the page numbers in the markup that controls the playback.

AccessibleTo indicate that an EPUB Publication conforms to the accessibility requirements of this specification, it must include a conformsTo property [DCTERMS] and an a11y:certifiedBy property [Accessibility Vocab].

The value of the conformsTo property must be one of the following IRIs:http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/accessibility-20170105.html#wcag-aThe EPUB Publication meets all accessibility requirements and achieves [WCAG 2.0] Level A conformance.http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/accessibility-20170105.html#wcag-aaThe EPUB Publication meets all accessibility requirements and achieves [WCAG 2.0] Level AA conformance.http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/accessibility-20170105.html#wcag-aaaThe EPUB Publication meets all accessibility requirements and achieves [WCAG 2.0] Level AAA conformance.

The a11y:certifiedBy property specifies the name of the party that certified the content. The certifier of the content could be the same party that created the EPUB Publication, but can also be a third party accessibility certifier.

AccessibleThe following example shows an EPUB 3 Publication that has been certified by a third party (the values of the dc:publisher and a11y:certifiedBy property differ).<metadata> … <dc:publisher>Acme Publishing Inc.</dc:publisher> <meta property=“a11y:certifiedBy”>Jim's Accessibility Testing</meta> <link rel="dcterms:conformsTo" href="http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/accessibility-20170105.html#wcag-aa"/> … </metadata>

The following example shows an EPUB 3 Publication that has been self-certified by the author.<metadata> … <dc:creator>Jane Doe</dc:creator> <meta property="a11y:certifiedBy">Jane Doe</meta> <link rel="dcterms:conformsTo" href="http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/accessibility-20170105.html#wcag-aa"/> … </metadata>

Key Things to Understand…▪We have a standard▪We have a way to measure content against that standard▪We have a means to certify the results▪The certification exposes the trusted source

…. so what can be done with this?

DAISY

The Accessibility CheckerAutomated Checker Manual Checklist

The Accessibility Checker

VitalSource: Transparency to Accessibility Features

eBook Vendor

InstitutionContent

(Publisher)

eBook Vendor Institution

Content (Publisher)

Helping Everyone do their Part

Longevity is required

• Its a journey, not a destination

• There is no ‘checkbox’ of conformance

• Stay involved, stay current